Godard's intertitles and font types

I know nothing about design and typography,
but here's an article about Godard's use of intertitles and front types. chic, but political...
anyway it's a nice post to review Godard's "design" of words, the found graphic and fragment of words.

not related but in addition, here old music video of PULP have some reference from Godard and also play a bit with the norm of music video structure.

-tzuan

Nagisa Oshima and Godard

"Breathless allows us to think the charm of cinema is from the continuity in the discontinuity"
 - Nagisa Oshima

Recently I read this quote from Nagisa Oshima and make me think about how the French new wave influenced the Japanese new wave in the 60s. The Japanese new wave directors, like the French new wave auteurs, aim to be liberated from their "father's cinema". They embrace the small scale shooting group and auteur. Lots of them were cooperated with the art house film company ATG (Art Theater Guild) which was a cinema magzine at its beginning...


I watched a serious of Oshima's film many years ago, the director's later works investigate the themes of confusion and rupture came with westernization/mordernization after world war II. I liked his late works such as Taboo(1999) and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence(1985). While these two works he seens not that enthusiastic about deconstructing the narrative structure like his earlier works.

Then I recall Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (1969). It was hard for me to understand when I watched it the first time. Now it seens clearer to me. The methods, including the collage of different materials, the combination of B/W and color, the decomposition of the narrative structure with voice-over, are all very Godard. The absurd action is more like a documentary fragrements of some behavior art, and make me think of the use of "Fool" in Godard's film. (such like Jean Pierre Leaud in Weekend). And the set of the love/sex story between the woman work in book store and the thief, is kind of Breathless...(although Oshima said it's more from The Thief Journal by Jean Genet). The way he demonstrates the polictics, sexual politic, and the student movements, compare with Godard, is more subtle and metaphorical, but all in relation with each other...


In some way this film is also a documenatry recording the 60s culture movement in Japan, lots influential people in art, culture and cinema fields are actually actors in the film. Including the pop artist Tadanori Yooko, theater troup leader/director Juro Kara, doll maker Yotsuya Simon and the most interesting one, the founder of Kinokuniya bookstore Moichi Tanabe.

Yotsuya Simon

-tzuan

Fragments of Conversations with Jean-Luc Godard (2007)

I just found that the documentary I was searching for a while before this class is recently uploaded on youtube by someone.

Here is Fragments of Conversations with Jean-Luc Godard (2007)

A documentary by Alain Fleischer that about the exhibition Kevyn posted, Voyage(s) en utopie at the Pompidou Center 2006.

The beginning of this project is because his teaching plan in La Fresnoy call Collage(s) de France was revised, so he turned the idea into an installation project, asked Alain Fleischer to make this documentary to record the process, combines with the interviews with several people such like Dominique Paini.

In the early part of this documentary, Godard gives reaction about the anti-semitic doubt towards him, and talks about his opinions on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This part is juxtaposed with some clips of and conversations about Notre Musique, which give me some late re-understanding about it.

The part that interested me most is in the 6~9 /12 part that Godard and Dominique Paini talks about new media installation and film, the different intransparency of the different medium, and the pre-existence of the language of cinema (Actually the quote by Andre S. Labarthe "the guillotine invented the close-up" was my motivation to find this documentary.) In my understanding this conversation brings out why Godard seen the cinema as a tool to doubt, also make me think of Pasolini's qoute "cinema in its essense is a question towards the sun…"   

-tzuan

A Recent Godard Interview

here's a recent JLG interview that he briefly told about Film Socialisme, Oscar and the Auteur. Seems like he's still sarcastic about Truffaut…


-tzuan

Godard-Terayama

"Cinema is dead", still from Les fruits de la passion, Terayama Shuji 1981
(the film involves Klaus Kinski as the main actor)


Before I saw any film of Godard, I remember once I read some article that posed Terayama Shuji as "the Japanese Godard," but I can't find the sources anymore and I can merely remember the points in the article.


Terayama Shuji (1935-1983), is a Japanese director/poet/playwright and so on. For film, he made a mad bunch of experimental short films, and 6 feature films. (You can see his shorts on ubu, although some of them was designed to screen with live performances so maybe are not that interesting to watch on-line). I can hardly see his work directly influenced by J-L Godard. But it is interesting for me to think about the social-culture environment of a certain era, the whole left-wing, student movement thing in the 1960s. In the other hand, the French New Wave influences the later German New Wave and Japanese New Wave and the cinema movement in other countries.


Terayama's two early works Tomato Ketchup King and Throw Away Your Books, Go Out into the Streets! are classified as Japanese New Wave on wikipedia. Tomato Ketchup King is an experimental short about a child dictator; the later one I haven't seem yet, but I heard it's more realistic than his later works. Terayama as the late Japanese New Wave director (in some perspective against the Ozu classical, elegant style) might have some different opinion on the idea of revolution/liberation than who he follows, it's interesting for me that his influence is not only in the "serious" genre of art cinema but now can be seen in popular culture like manga (or cartoon), while the the idea of revolution/provocative in the '68 generation globally transforms into different form or decadence, or turns into the "inward looking generation" in Japan especially in teenager culture like otaku nowadays. (Shoujou Revolution Utena, which is one of the most popular animation works of the 90s was literally influenced by Terayama and even uses the same composer J.A. Seaser, who led the theater troupe after Terayama's death.)





Another point is how theatrical theories like Brecht's distancing effect influences the various new wave cinema movements. It's everywhere in Terayama's works like Godard's, like the captures, the color shifting and the actors staring at the audiences, and so on. While a lot of the elements Terayama uses literally come from the folk theater tradition against the ideology of development in the post-World War II context [they are remarkable compatible with the techniques developed by Brecht in Western culture to "alienate" the viewer so as to keep him/her from being absorbed into the fictional landscape].


One of his best work To Die in the Country is screening at Spectacle Theater this weekend.





-tzuan wu